Earlier this week, I volunteered to help my manfriend clean his rather unfortunate kitchen. While balls-deep in Butthole Surfers, cheap malbec, and on my second steel wool, he innocently asked, “Is this…OK with you?” I think, since cleaning is traditionally not the most party time task we get to experience in life, he thought surely I was cursing him under my breath. But…guys, I’m kind of a pervert.

Caroline accidentally named it about a month ago when we were kicking it with bourbon and Kevin on my couch. I’m not sure how it came up, but I was trying to recall an OxiClean commercial—you know, those ones from the ’90s when that bearded dude crouches next to a sickly-looking light brown bathtub and is all,”YO WATCH THIS,” and when you do, you see him swipe a perfect white scar, cutting through the scuzz. “HOLY FUCK,” 8-year-old me thought. Caroline nodded knowingly as I detailed all of this. “Oh yeah,” she said. “Biore pore strip people. I’m one of those, too.”

As previously mentioned, I had family in town this weekend. It was lovely. Among my favorite moments was the discovery of what an absolute visionary my grandmother is with spatial planning and interior practicality. We were sitting around on furniture the same way I’d haphazardly splayed it from the moving truck in August. Seriously, I just told Rick and Dillon to “put shit wherever” and it all kinda just…stayed. Granny off-the-cuff was like, “What if the couch was on that wall and you tipped your record shelf up and stuck it in the corner?” I think she immediately regretted uttering a thing because I cracked a beer for everyone and started sliding things across the floor. Between my dad, mom, and grandma, we reworked the living room entirely in under an hour. The only new additions included a lamp my folks found on the curb and a coat rack we got for $3 at Value Village and spray painted gold (obvs).

Weird how you can breathe new life in a space simply by moving around a bunch of pre-existing materials. This is a metaphor, I’m convinced. And for real, it’s at least 70 percent more comfortable in there, y’all.